Why is this my body?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Cyperium, Jun 25, 2012.

  1. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    Why is it your DNA? Why were they your parents?

    You still haven't explained why this is my body, that you try but fail only shows that you don't yet understand the problem. You have to understand the problem to tackle it.
     
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  3. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    Well, I could own a TV without knowing fully how it works, and the TV will have a life-span as well. Just because we have a body that we call our own doesn't mean that we can control every aspect of it. That which we can control is enough to make us realise that we are our body to that degree at least.
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Irrelevant.


    I'm not giving advice.
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    1. Without the sense of self, we wouldn't know which hole to put the food in, mine or yours.
    2. See 1. Also, culture tends to amplify the illusion.
    3. Why would you want to take it seriously?

    All of the above is useless for legal purposes. Another artifact of society that must regulate behavior.
     
  8. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Must be the case, as I don't see any problem.

    Only problem I see is that you think of "you" as something separate from your physical makeup.

    EDIT: As far as I can tell, my "mind" or "self", originates in the physical processes of my brain. This belief is re-enforced by the fact that there are "mind altering" substances that are purely chemical/physical in nature.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2012
  9. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    But if "I" is your body, then that undermines the whole 'How come I am in this body instead of any other body?' of the topic. It couldn't be otherwise. Again, if one's memories were lost and learning took place all over again under different conditions and different social community, then after some years, those who formerly knew one would say: "This is not the same person; the body is still around but not the person we knew before."

    However, "you" even as stored / preserved information patterns would not fully operate as "you" without the same body or biotic form that such a particular "scheme" of individual-hood developed in. Besides those scenarios of your "program" being downloaded into another human body or a robot body's computer, there's the example of brain injury of some ultra-Phineas Gage class. Say the memories are fully preserved, but the altered brain structure they are now functioning in would result in evaluations, decisions, and behaviors which deviated from what would have resulted with the prior, unmodified organ.

    Thus, you're a complex pattern of data that could arguably be considered separate from "this body" if a static version of its current elemental values and relationships could be replicated in a different substrate. But to proceed to operate as it otherwise would have requires the framework and workings of the cellular organization and biochemistry of the original substrate / body to be precisely replicated as well, for "your program" to run in.
     
  10. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Right.

    Cyperium seems to be thinking that there's some essence of himself, some mysterious disembodied substance that he refers to when he says "me" or "I", that could hypothetically animate any body, and possess any memories, any beliefs, any attitudes, any relationships, any history at all. But however it's embodied, it would still be "him", somehow, in some unexplained way.

    And conversely, a single body with a single history and a single set of memories, habits, sensations, feelings and relationships, might play host to any number of different transcendental occupants, without anything that's observable to outer, or even to inner experience, being any different.

    I don't see how that's possible.

    There doesn't seem to be any way of observing "selves", of determining when a 'self' exists or doesn't exist, or determining the individual identity of a hypothetical 'self', apart from external observation of our own and other people's bodily form and action, and from internal observation of one's own psychological states.

    If we take away the body, it's actions, and all of its inner states, I don't think that anything would remain.

    This very widespread (even among philosophers) idea of a mysterious supernatural "self" might conceivably be the product of people's habit of imagining human psychology as a process of inner perception. People imagine that there is a little metaphysical eye located somewhere inside their heads, a mysterious observer who experiences not only the world around their bodies and their bodies' own physiological sensations, but all of their mind's psychological states as well. If we remember something, then a little internal person (sometimes philosophers call it the homunculus) inside our head must be looking at the memory in much the same way that our bodies' eyes look at external things. It's the unseen seer, the inner witness, the subjective self, the soul.

    A difficulty is that presumably this mysterious supernatural being would never be able to directly experience itself. It's supposed to be the principle of pure subjectivity, and in order to experience itself it would have to reduce itself to an object, to an experiential content, to a thing seen instead of the seer who sees it. The inner homunculus remains what Kantians might call the 'noumenal self', as opposed to the 'phenomenal self', our observable self that's the product of our bodies and its inner and outer experiential processes.

    It isn't hard to understand why LG wants to defend the transcendental self, if he's a Krishna worshipper, since the transcendental self is a fundamental element of Hindu belief.

    An interesting (to me anyway) aside is that if the transcendental self is imagined as pure awareness, then it's going to be impossible to individuate it into discrete individuals. There's really nothing to distinguish my awarness from your awareness, if all of the contents of awareness have been taken away. The Hindu Advaitists make use of this idea by arguing/suggesting/revealing that there's really only one cosmic awareness, the same in all of us. If it's experiencing my life through my body, mind and karma, we call it my experience. If it's experiencing your life through your body, mind and karma, then we call it your experience. But ultimately our multitude of human lives are all just phantasms and there's really only one experiencer, one cosmic Self. So ultimately we're all God, if we can only bring our human awareness to the state where we actually realize it.

    As for me, I take a view that's much more akin to that of the ancient Buddhists, who argued that whatever a human can possibly be aware of, it's never going to be this hypothetical noumenal 'self'. So there's really no reason to anyone to think that transcendental selves exist at all, except as the products of our own imaginations.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2012
  11. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    It originates in the physical processes of the brain. I already know that. It does that to all humans, it doesn't explain why this particular body is me instead of all the other humans it does exactly the same thing to.




    It doesn't undermine the topic. Each "I" is a body, there is no explanation as to why this particular "I" is this particular body.



    What do you base this on? What is it to "me" that is this body instead of any other body that also has a "me"?


    Yes, but you would still perceive yourself in the body, even if you lost all your memories. Some other "I" wouldn't suddenly find itself in the body in place of you. You would still exist as your body, whatever memories that body has.

    Yes, but still he would be in the body. It wouldn't be a different "I" even if that "I" would perceive himself differently.


    Let's say I died, and a million years later in a galaxy far, far away someone was born with exactly the same properties as I had. According to your idea, as I'm fully defined by those properties, I would exist again, I wouldn't have any memories of my previous self, but I would exist.

    Say that this galaxy is a billion lightyears away, no way could any physical information have travelled that fast in a million years, so at least we can know that my existence isn't physical information.





    It doesn't matter what I think if all the answers imply it. Can you find a answer that doesn't imply it while still answering my question?


    Why should that not be possible? I don't even see how it is possible that I exist, yet I do. You wouldn't believe that didn't you know the result, if you base it on your current reasoning. You would say, there is no such thing as inner-experience. It's only because you have it yourself that you have to admit to it. Why could there only be one existence that is granted by my body?
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2012
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    There is no "I". You are looking for something that doesn't exist.
     
  13. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    I know that I exist, it's a axiom. Even the slightest perception that I exist would inescapably make it so or I wouldn't have the perception.
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The perception exists, but not a perceiver.
     
  15. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    You are equating the perception with the perceiver. If so, then there is a perceiver still which is the perception.

    That the perception exists, implies the perceiver. Much the same way a painting implies a canvas. Or a sound implies a medium to travel through. Without the perceiver there wouldn't be the perception. The other way around might be equally valid, the perceiver might need perceptions just as much as the perception needs the perceiver. I would say that there is more likelyhood that the perception needs the perceiver than the perceiver needs the perception though. The air doesn't need the sound, the canvas doesn't need the image. If I were to apply likelyhood to things that I've seen in reality then that would be the way I would apply that likelyhood. I don't see why it should behave differently than what we are used to in reality, after all.


    That said, the perceiver might be a kind of perception itself. A perception that can hold other perceptions. I think that might be the case...in fact I'm growing pretty confident that it is the case!

    It doesn't answer my original question though, so I'm afraid it doesn't become anything other than a sidenote to the topic.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2012
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    There is the mechanism of the brain which generates thoughts, and reacts to perceptions, but that is not the same as the self. The illusion of a continuous self is generated by the continuity of thought, simply for practical purposes, to sustain the physical organism.
     
  17. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    Why name it a "illusion" when it does produce a continuous self? If the illusion causes the real deal, then why name it a illusion, instead of a method to produce it?

    It is as if you want to imply that it isn't real? But how can it produce something when what it produces isn't real?
     
  18. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Are the images on a television real? When thought ceases, the self ceases, so it was never a real thing in the first place.
     
  19. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    The images on the television is real as images. The depth and other things associated with it is as real as what it suggests. If we perceive depth then the depth in the perception is real, even if there is no depth in what we perceive.

    There are no illusions, illusions are just a name of something that when interpreted becomes something else than the raw information. What it becomes is still real though. There are no unreal things.

    When our subjective perception doesn't conform to the objective, then we might call it unreal (because it isn't the objective) but it isn't unreal as a subjective perception.
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    And how do you know that?
     
  21. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    The "illusion" is in you thinking that you inhabit your body, the reality is that your body is producing "you".
     
  22. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    And what exactly is it that you can control about your body?


    But why must society regulate behavior?

    If there is no I, there is no perpetrator and no victim - and no crime, no problem.

    You're getting yourself further and further into the problem of illusion and why it exists.
    It would be prudent here to consider Occham.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I told you, I used to be a Buddhist and graduated something happened.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2012

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